1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to graphics display and control technologies, and more particularly, to graphics display systems and methods for managing an operation mode of graphics displays to save system resources and power.
2. Description of the Related Art
For most electronic devices, such as desktop computers, laptop computers, or workstations, display devices (or so-called monitors) coupled thereto or built therein are required as basic human-machine interfaces (MMI) and/or for multi-media applications. Generally, an electronic device uses a graphic card, a video card, or a video adapter to process graphics data and further drives a display device to display graphic images for providing interaction with users.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a conventional display architecture of an electronic device. In the electronic device 100, a central control unit 110 is provided with a display card 120. The display card 120 is coupled to a display device 130 via interfaces of the Low-Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) architecture. The interfaces include a data bus 10 and a Display Data Channel (DDC) bus 20, wherein the data bus 10 is used for delivering frame data and the DDC bus 20 is used for the display card 120 to retrieve the information and settings of the display device 130. For optimizing the performance of the display device 130, the display card 120 may adjust parameters, e.g. brightness, contrast, and chroma, etc., of the display device 130, and/or initialize or demagnetize the display device 130 via the DDC bus 20. The DDC bus 20 may further include a Serial DAta (SDA) line 21 and a Serial Clock (SCL) line 22, wherein the SDA line 21 is used for delivering internal data, such as brand name, serial number, and supported resolutions, etc., of the display device 130 and the SCL line 22 is used for delivering synchronous clock pulses for the data delivery on the SDA line 21.
In the cases where the user temporarily leaves the desk where an electronic device is placed or the user temporarily performs other tasks not involving the electronic device, the operation mode of the electronic device is switched to an idle mode and the graphic images outputted by the display device 130 remains unchanged. However, the display card 120 still continues to output the same frame data to the display device 130. Consequently, unnecessary system resources are occupied and power is consumed for the continuing display of the unchanged graphic images, including the operation of the display card 120 and data delivery on the data bus 10 and the DDC bus 20.